No One Had A Tongue To Speak – Book Review
“No One Had a Tongue to Speak” gives an in depth description of the Machhu Dam disaster that occurred in India on August 11, 1979. It begins with narration of day to day life in the city of Morbi, south of the Machhu Dam. The setting is mid July 1979, a month that is supposed to bring the height of the rainy season, but in this particular year the monsoon has still not reached the region and the Machhu River bed is all but dry. It goes onto give a brief history of the Machhu Dam itself, how the idea of the dam was on the minds of government officials and citizens for many years before it was finally constructed not long before it failed. It briefly touches upon a couple reasons as to why it was never built, and that the original contractor warned the head of government that a failure was very possible. Through the years his warnings may have faded or just ignored and the Machhu Dam – II was built.
The rains arrived over Morbi in the end of July, and they were relentless, but they revived the earth and the people rejoiced. Two weeks of heavy monsoon rains followed and the reservoir upstream of the Macchu dam was over flowing causing a huge and already dangerous outflow from the floodgates. With jammed gates, and failures to emit sufficient warnings to the citizens of Morbi the afternoon of August 11, 1979 slowly approached. The Machhu Dam failed around 2:30 p.m. and the water passing over the land is described as having come in three waves, all higher than the previous, with the third being 20 feet or more at its peak.
The authors write about citizens taking shelter on the tallest buildings, with many whom are still being pulled and washed away by the current. The lives and stories of 25,000 people were swept away in a horrifically short amount of time. The aftermath described is unbelievable in the worst possible way. Broken homes and broken bodies littered the once great city of Morbi and the villages and fields surrounding it. The ending of the book tells of the futile and tedious cleanup efforts and decisions for the ruined city. Headlines of this massive flash flood filled the newspapers and televisions of people around the world before it was known to most of the people in India. In the closing chapter the present day opinions of the flood, and a look at how the disaster is viewed by people of the region now, are given.
The book tells the story of life in the city of Morbi before, during and in the aftermath of the flood, through testimonies from residents who survived and witnessed the death and destruction of the Macchu Dam failure. I feel that is the only way to portray the true magnitude of the disaster. Hearing the stories from a person who had been forever altered by the event gave it a hard hitting and emotionally drawing punch that would have otherwise been absent.
Along with the testimonies came some confusion though. The stories heard from those who survived obviously overlapped, and it was sometimes unclear when the authors started the day over with a different witnessed account of the tragedy. I also am stilled baffled by the amount of media attention the disaster got around the world, with headlines filling newspapers from one side of the globe to the other. How did a disaster who killed so many people and that had so much coverage fade from the history books and from people’s memory so quickly? The inaccessibility to government records is a huge issue that is mentioned briefly in the book. With few survivors, some of the only recorded accounts are locked away. I would be extremely interested in finding out more about why this devastating event has all but disappeared from the pages of history.
The authors of this book went above and beyond in their research compared to most writers. They traveled to many new and not always desirable places, and asked the tough questions in ways that derived detailed and truthful answers and testimonies, and for that I give my utmost respect to this book. It was very well done, albeit the small amount of confusion I experienced with the slightly conflicting accounts from the many eye witnesses.
I would recommend this book to everyone. I think it gives an incredibly eye opening look into another culture through the way they view natural disasters, and the way it was handled. It’s a perspective I feel that many people fail to ever see. The story of the Machhu Dam disaster is one that faded from memory for far too long, and I recommend this book in hopes that others will read it and their memories and their page in history will live on.
Utpal, S. & Wooten, T. (2011). No One Had a Tongue to Speak. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
